1 The promise, therefore, still holds good, that we are to attain God’s rest; what we have to be afraid of, is that there may be someone among you who will be found to have missed his chance. 2 The promise has been proclaimed to us, just as it was to them. The message which came to them did them no good, because it was not met by belief in what they heard,[1] 3 and this rest is only to be attained by those who, like ourselves, have learned to believe; that is why he said, I took an oath in my anger, They shall never attain my rest. God’s rest, from what? From labours which were over and done with, as soon as the world was founded;[2] 4 in another passage he has said of the sabbath, God rested on the seventh day from all his labours; 5 and yet in this passage he is still saying, They shall not attain my rest. 6 It is still left for some, then, to attain it, and meanwhile, those to whom the message first came have been excluded by their unbelief. 7 So he fixes another day, To-day, as he calls it; in the person of David, all those long years afterwards, he uses the words I have already quoted, If you hear his voice speaking this day, do not harden your hearts. 8 (Josue cannot have brought them their rest, or God would not still be talking of a fresh To-day, long afterwards.) 9 You see, therefore, that God’s people have a sabbath of rest still in store for them; 10 to attain his rest means resting from human labours, as God did from divine.[3]

11 We must strive eagerly, then, to attain that rest; none of you must fall away into the same kind of unbelief. 12 God’s word to us is something alive, full of energy; it can penetrate deeper than any two-edged sword, reaching the very division between soul and spirit, between joints and marrow, quick to distinguish every thought and design in our hearts.[4] 13 From him, no creature can be hidden; everything lies bare, everything is brought face to face with him, this God to whom we must give our account.

14 Let us hold fast, then, by the faith we profess. We can claim a great high priest, and one who has passed right up through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God. 15 It is not as if our high priest was incapable of feeling for us in our humiliations; he has been through every trial, fashioned as we are, only sinless. 16 Let us come boldly, then, before the throne of grace, to meet with mercy, and win that grace which will help us in our needs.

[2] ‘God’s rest, from what? From labours which were over and done with’; literally, ‘the labours having been accomplished’. There has been much dispute over this sentence and the two verses which follow; neither their meaning nor their relevance to the context is clear. The translation here given assumes that the Apostle’s thought is as follows: God himself rested after the Creation, but did not summon any human creatures to share his rest till long afterwards, at the time of the Exodus. That summons having been disregarded, it is not wonderful that he should leave another long interval before repeating it; this time, at the Incarnation.

[3] It is possible to take this sentence differently, as referring to Christ; ‘He who has attained to God’s rest has rested from his labours, as God did from his own’. But it seems doubtful whether this allusion contributes anything to the argument.

[4] ‘God’s word to us’; some have understood this as meaning ‘God’s Word’, that is, Christ.